(Al Jazeera Media Network) Russia this week rejected the latest United States peace proposal for Ukraine and declared victory in battles over key Ukrainian cities – claims Ukraine has dismissed as propaganda.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence on Monday night said it had seized the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk it has been besieging for a year. Defence Minister Andrei Belousov later repeated the claim personally.
Russia also said it had pushed Ukrainian defenders out of Vovchansk and Kupiansk, cities in the northern Kharkiv region.
“Most of the city of Kupiansk is under the control of Ukrainian troops,” said Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force, a command structure responsible for the defence of Kharkiv, rebutting Russia’s claim.
The reported Russian advances came on the eve of US envoy Steve Witkoff’s arrival in Moscow for peace talks with Yury Ushakov, a key aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the timing of the claims was designed to make an impression on the US delegation.
“The brazen statements of the leadership of the aggressor country about the ‘seizure’ of these settlements by the Russian army are not valid,” the General Staff said, decrying them as “propaganda” to influence participants of “international negotiations”.
The General Staff said its forces were still fighting in Pokrovsk, Vovchansk and Kupiansk.
In Pokrovsk, “the Defence Forces hold the northern part of the city along the railway line,” it said.
Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii went further, saying Ukraine had blocked Russian infiltration into Kupiansk, and was “working on gradually pushing the enemy out of their bridgehead north of the city.”
But as Ukraine’s military commanders denied claims of further losses, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government was rocked again by the dismissal of a high-profile political figure over corruption allegations. Observers have debated how the sacking of Zelenskyy’s right-hand man, Andriy Yermak, a week ago, could affect Kyiv’s standing in peace talks.
The documents Witkoff took to Moscow were the result of intense negotiations between the US and Ukraine in Florida on Sunday and Monday.
Those talks followed a first round of US-Ukrainian talks in Geneva a week earlier on the basis of a 28-point peace plan presented by Washington.
Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have said that the original plan was the outcome of talks between US President Donald Trump and Putin at a summit in Alaska last August. The forum was considered controversial since it left out Ukraine and its European allies.
Putin’s aide Ushakov told journalists the US-Ukrainian talks had reduced the points to 20, and broken up the list into four separate documents, but that Russia had agreed to nothing.
“We didn’t discuss specific wording or specific American proposals,” Ushakov said about his five-hour meeting with Witkoff. “We specifically discussed territorial issues … we also discussed the enormous prospects for future economic cooperation between the two countries,” he said, referring to the US and Russia.
The conquest of Pokrovsk, Putin told journalists on Tuesday, was “a good base for achieving all the objectives set at the beginning of the special military operation”, suggesting Russia’s war goals remained unchanged.
He threatened to “cut Ukraine off from the sea,” a clear reference to Odesa and Mykolaiv, Ukraine’s only remaining littoral territory, the seizure of which appears to have been part of the original Russian invasion plan.
Asked about peace last week, Putin told journalists, “We still have proposals coming in about ceasing hostilities. When the Ukrainian troops leave the areas they are now occupying, then the hostilities will cease. And if they don’t, we will make them leave using our firepower.”
